My wife and I were sitting in church. The pastor was referencing a passage in Ephesians which read: “Look carefully then how you walk…” He elaborated, “Anybody who has a dog knows what the author is implying. If you walk where your dog has been, you don’t stroll carelessly.” I leaned over to my wife and said, “Or, in our case, copperheads.”
This past summer, while some grandchildren were helping me chip wood, I almost sat on a snake warming himself on the nearby low stone wall. It turned out to be a garter, and my granddaughter was soon holding it in her gloved hands.
So a month later, when I was mulching some junipers on our back slope, I wasn’t alarmed to see a snake coiled three feet from me. I kept glancing his way over the next 15 minutes to confirm he hadn’t moved, since I was mostly lying down as I finished mulching.
While putting away my tools, I pulled up the pic of my granddaughter with her snake, and at that moment realized my current coiled friend looked strikingly different. The slow-responding grey matter between my ears registered: “I’ve seen this skin pattern before.”
I walked over to the slope and aimed my Seek app on my newly met reptilian friend. In that darkening evening sky, the description read: “Copperhead.” Hmmm… Maybe I should have “Looked more carefully how I walked…”
A week later my wife was hosting a brunch. Outside my front door my previously coiled acquaintance was snared in deer netting draped over bushes. I stood by the door to block the view as the ladies arrived. I felt pity for this creature of beauty and called animal rescue to find out what could be done. My wife was insisting I kill it.
We had rescued a large black snake a year earlier caught in netting. An initially unwilling UPS driver agreed to take a short break and help me hold down the snake’s head with a forked stick while we clipped away the netting pressed deeply into his scales. I had felt a joy seeing him released.
I imagined doing the same for this copperhead, but he was tangled in a much finer mesh with numerously more loops. As I was strategizing how I might safely get close enough, animal rescue called back. Once the situation was described, I was firmly admonished: “There’s no way to free that snake without being bitten. I’m not about to send one of my rangers into that risk. You have to kill it. You can do that, right?”
Well, I could… I had learned from the past, snakes don’t die easily. And it proved to be true here as well. Numerous strikes with a spade were required. However, having been decapitated, with mouth stretched open, the fangs were on vivid display. My docile companion now projected a strikingly sinister appearance.
Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise… because the days are evil. (Ephesians 5:15-16, ESV)
Evil. I reflected on this passage regarding my pastor’s dog poop analogy and my copperhead experience. What was Paul, the writer of the Ephesians letter, referencing when he penned these words? A few lines earlier the author had shared:
But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. (Ephesians 5:3)
Not even be named? That’s a pretty high standard. He didn’t say: “You shouldn’t be caught.” And he didn’t just imply: “This is pretty bad stuff to be doing.” Instead, he said sexual immorality — all sexual activity outside a marriage covenant — should not even be hinted as occurring. It’s simply that wrong.
That perspective is about as foreign and nonsensical to the people I interact with every day as foregoing the use of cars, or electricity, or iPhones. After all, it’s right in front of me and being offered. Why not enjoy it?
Thirty years of marriage, trauma, and sexual abuse counseling have strongly reinforced in me a conviction that God’s ways are life. For decades, I have been sold temptations and allurements that have not delivered as advertised. And in contrast, I have seen up close the pain and at times devastation experienced by those who were told sex is free.
Today, and for most of man’s existence, the volume on “it will delight” has been turned up, and the warnings from those who bear the scars of ungoverned sexual activity is strongly muted. Sadly, this is the case both for those attending church and those who don’t.
So back to dog poop and copperheads. When I read Paul’s exhortationlook carefully then how you walk, do I receive it with a lens of I might get something smelly on my new Hokas, or that there might be two fangs injecting poisonous venom in my calf? After all, it was foolish ignorance that kept me lying on the ground three feet from what I had perceived as a harmless friend. Things could have turned out much different.
Regarding copperheads and sinful enticements, I want to attentively look carefully how I walk.
Interactive Questions:
- In what ways has God kept you from harm?
- Are you getting clarity on the potential fangs of some of your choices?
- For further insight on the allurement and ruination of sexual activity outside of marriage, check out: Proverbs 5 and 7; I Samuel 11-12; and I Corinthians 6:9-20.